Adam Rogers Sight John Patitucci Clarence Penn

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SIGHT ADAM ROGERS

1. SIGHT (A. Rogers) 6.39

2. I HEAR A RHAPSODY (Baker-Fragos) 6.14

3. KALEIDOSCOPE (A. Rogers) 4.58

4. YESTERDAYS (J. Kern) 7.24

5. MEMORY’S TRANSLUCENCE (A. Rogers) 5.12

6. LET’S COOL ONE (Th. Monk) 7.38

7. HOURGLASS (A. Rogers) 4.32

8. THEMOONTRANE (W. Shaw) 7.01

9. BEAUTIFUL LOVE (Gillespie-King-Van Alstyne-Young) 5.29

10. DEXTERITY (C. Parker) 6.29

TOTAL TIME: 61.56

ADAM ROGERS guitars, piano (1)

JOHN PATITUCCI bass

CLARENCE PENN drums

Produced by Gerry Teekens Recording Engineer: Michael Marciano Mixing: Michael Marciano, Adam Rogers Mastering: Michael Marciano, Adam Rogers Recorded: December 19,2008

® © 2009 Criss Cross Jazz

Recorded at Systems Two Recording Studios, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Photography: Jonas Bostrom

Cover Design: Gerry Teekens/Bloemendaal in Vorm

Criss Cross Jazz, Postbox 1214 7500 BE Enschede, Holland Phone (31) 53 - 433 03 38 info@crisscrossjazz.com www.crisscrossjazz.com

All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws. Made in Holland

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Sight

“I love the space that guitar trio affords,” says Adam Rogers, who presents his

second consecutive investigation of the idiom on Sight, his fifth Criss Cross

recording. “It allows for great interpretive leeway, even when you’re just playing

the melodies. Without piano—and I love what the pianists I’ve worked with do with

harmony—I can explore a wide-open swath of harmonic territory.”

Throughout the proceedings, Rogers engages in three-way conversation

with his partners, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Clarence Penn, each a

world-class virtuoso with ears to match their prodigious chops. “Clarence and John

are so open to whatever atmosphere is taking place,” he says. “As soon as we start

playing there’s always a beautiful landscape of sound that inspires improvising.

I’m not hearing the same things I hear when the piano is there. Regarding the

lack of another melodic instrument, when you’re not concerned about doubling or

accompanying somebody else playing a melody, you can take more liberties, which

allows you more expressive potential.”

Not that self-expression was in any way deficient on Rogers’ 2001

Criss Criss debut, The Art of the Invisible [Criss 1223], a quartet recital with

pianist Edward Simon, bassist Scott Colley and Penn, nor his subsequent quintet

sessions (Allegory [Criss 1242] and Apparitions [Criss 1263]) on which Chris

Potter augmented that stellar unit. “In a recording situation I typically gravitate

towards hearing my tunes more heavily orchestrated,” Rogers notes. But the

guitarist, 43, adds that his 2006 acoustic trio debut, Time and the Infinite

[Criss 1286], with Colley and drum master Bill Stewart, helped him “overcome

any reluctance about not having two additional instruments playing the music; I’ve

1

become more comfortable without the additional soloists and melodic/harmonic

doublings”

In 2004, when Rogers made the third of his three combo dates, he had

recently begun to transition from a career path defined by satisfying the needs

of a sizable, high-profile cohort of peers and elders to one marked by selective

sidemanning and following the dictates of his own muse. These days, when not

showcasing his own projects, he does consequential road-warrioring in Potter’s

popular Underground band, with which he had just come off a 33-day tour when he

entered the studio with Patitucci and Penn. “We’ve also toured and done numerous

gigs with this group as John’s trio,” he adds. “I love the interplay that happens

between us, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to record with these two

extraordinary musicians.”

Rogers and Patitucci joined forces in 1998, after the bassist, who had

heard Rogers over the airwaves on a Randy Brecker track, called him to play a

Birdland engagement. “We’re both jazz musicians with a shared interest and training

in classical music and other forms,” Rogers says.. “In addition to his extraordinary

technical ability, he’s incredibly open and enthusiastic, so we really hit it off. We did

a bunch of playing in the late ‘90s, and I played on his trio record Line bv Line with

Brian Blade on which he recorded one of my tunes. We’ve also played duo and a

bunch with Michael Brecker.

“Clarence is a very thoughtful and schooled drummer, but his playing

never sounds studied in any way to me. He always comes up with a great take on

how to interpret the sometimes complicated music I write, and manages to figure out

how to make it sound as musical as I would hope. He can play tons of complicated

stuff, but it always sounds organic, with a beautiful sense of swing and a certain

rawness.”

The bass-drum synchronicity is evident on Sight, a Rogers original

grounded in a clave-tinged bassline that he wrote some years ago. “I always had

it in the back of my mind to write a tune around this bass figure,” he says. “It can

be easy to come up with an inspired A-section or bassline, but finding something

commensurate in quality for the remainder of a tune is frequently the challenge for

me.”

Here, Rogers relates, “I came up with a melody in an E-Phrygian mode

over the bassline, which is in the same mode, and a 4-bar interlude between both

A-sections. I solo over an F major chord and then over E-Phrygian, before playing

the A-section and the interlude to a coda, with one bar of melodic connective tissue

from the B-section to this long C coda section, which I wanted to have a long,

languid, much sparser melody than the initial one, which feels dark, but much more

melodic and tonal. I think the last section might exhibit the influence of the great

classical composer Arvo Part—he writes gorgeous melodies and harmonic motions

that sometimes repeat over and over, and grow in intensity through dynamic

reorchestration. I tend to write tightly voiced chords whose intricacies can be

obscured by my dark guitar sound, so I overdubbed piano in the last section to flush

out the orchestration and illuminate the harmony.”

Rogers incorporates metric modulation techniques to create a different

interpretative framework for / Hear A Rhapsody. “It’s a standard that I learned years

ago from people calling it on gigs,” he says. “It starts out in C-minor and goes to

E-flat, sort of from dark to light, with a nice harmonic form to play over. As an intro,

I deceptively use the first 5 notes of the melody and continue with a vamp that is 3

bars of 3/4 and 2 bars of 4/4, using the chords C minor, Bb maj. augmented and E

major. We play it a few times before going into a non-arranged interpretation of the

melody up until the B-section, where I give the bass note a dotted half-note pattern

over the 4/4 tempo.. On the last A-section we play the melody straight and take a

couple of solos over the changes before returning to the initial vamp for a drum solo/

coda.”

Kaleidoscope has the interior quality of a dream. Taken at a ballad

tempo, the melodic lines have an atonal feel, expressed in a guitar-bass,

counterpoint with shifting key relationships. “In the solo section I wanted to express

something more tonal as a sort of release from the harmonic/melodic ambiguity of

the melody,” Rogers says. “The initial statement of the solo form has a bar of 5/4, a

bar of 6/4, then a bar of 6/4 and a bar of 5/4; in the first couple of bars it goes from

C-minor to A-flat minor, and in the second couple of bars from F-sharp minor to

D-minor. In the solo section we just play the same harmonic structure in 6/4.”

Establishing a medium-up clip, the trio navigates the rhythmic obstacle

course that Rogers presents in his chart of Yesterdays with a panache that makes

the complex form seem like a straight line. “I always loved the melancholy, beautiful

melody, and the arrangement expressed an idea that I felt organically related to

the tune,” he says. “I play the melody over a vamp, which is a dotted quarter note

bassline in 4/4 with a 3-over-4 feel. Then there’s a metrically modulated, feigned

speed-up which is actually a quarter-note triplet metric modulation in 7/4, which

then shifts to 4 bars of 3/4, which, even though we’re in the original tempo, sounds

almost rubato. I play the last 8 bars in the regular tempo of the tune, with half-notes

tied to eighth-note bass displacements. We play the melody down twice, and the

first two choruses of improvising are over this same form, while the rest of the

blowing is over the changes of the standard.”

Inspired by Ornette Coleman and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson,

a Rogers employer during the ‘80s, Memory’s Translucence is, Rogers states,

“completely free with regard to tempo, with two distinct sections. I wanted to write

a very tonal melody that modulates extremely—specifically the first statement of the

melody for what would be the first few bars—even though there aren’t any bars—it

goes from B-flat to E-flat, then A-flat-minor, and continues from there. Even though

it modulates constantly the melodies inside each change are tonal with relation to

the new key center. The B-section has a different cadence and also moves through

various keys, but there is still a very tonal relationship within each modulation. Even

though the time is free, we played over the changes.”

The swing is powerful on Let’s Cool One, a Thelonious Monk line that

Rogers heard “really young” on the 1961 Steve Lacy-Don Cherry LP Evidence. “I’m

a huge Steve Lacy fan. I love his interpretation of all Monk’s music and pretty much

anything he ever played,” Rogers says. “It has an incredibly endearing melody, as

a lot of Monk tunes do, and he and Don Cherry’s interpretation, with the inimitable

playing of Billy Higgins behind them, influenced me in wanting to record this tune.

A lot of the A-section melody is quarter notes, which allowed me to exist in the

graceful and elegant beat that Clarence and John create.”

On Hourglass Rogers frames his contrapuntal explorations within a

surging urban environment, propelled by precisely articulated freebop beats.’The

melody stems from my writing music on piano with two (seemingly diametrically

opposed) lines that contain a lot of rhythmic and chromatic melodic counterpoint,”

Rogers says of the brisk performance. “The form is two times through this

contrapuntal melody into a short rubato section of chords, and then we blow openly

over an E-flat-minor blues.” A restatement of the original theme ends with a guitar

and bass doubling of the first 6 beats of the bass line.

As a teenager, Rogers fell in love with Moontrane, a Wood Shaw tune

that debuted on the 1965 Blue Note album Unity, with Shaw, Larry Young, Joe

Henderson and Elvin Jones. This performance, featuring a lucid guitar declamation

and a cosigning thematic drum solo, does justice to the original. “It has a beautiful

harmonic framework that’s conducive to soloing,” Rogers says. “John and Clarence

get such a deep, beautiful swing, that it’s inspiring to play simply—you don’t have to

do that much.”

Referencing his classical background, Rogers deploys his nylon string

guitar for a nuanced version of Beautiful Love. The melodic and harmonic structure

of this song has always moved me and I think the melody somehow really fits my

style of playing.” he says.

A highlight of Time and the Infinite was a crisp reading of Charlie

Parker’s Cheryl. Here, to close the set, Rogers and company navigate Dexterity,

one of Bird’s many ingenious Rhythm variants, with an idiomatic, songlike flow that

channels Parker’s message. “Rhythm changes are some of the most challenging

to play over because they move around quite a bit, but not as a heavily modulated

movement,” he says. “You can play very diatonically or over all the chords. Bird was

probably my first really important inspiration as a jazz musician and never ceases to

reveal his brilliance. His recordings bowl me over every time I hear them. Everything

he played operates at such a deep level of musical and emotional depth.”

This piece of unintentional self-description defines the imperatives that

inform every note on this latest by Rogers, who again, truth be told, reveals his

stature as a modern master.

Ted Panken